A lot of drinks have interesting histories. And then there is absinthe.
The favorite boisson of 19th-century Paris, the great wormwood spirit is inexorably associated with its world-famous devotees. Artists like Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Vincent van Gogh included it in their paintings, while Oscar Wilde, Arthur Rimbaud, and other Belle Époque literary luminaries hailed the drink known as la Fée Verte, or “the Green Fairy.” With French consumption swelling to 15 times the level of its 1875 volume by 1913, absinthe was so much a part of life in the country that the period before the First World War acquired a nickname among historians: les années vertes, or “the green years.” Then the drink mostly disappeared, due to a panic about its effects on health and a subsequent ban on its production and consumption that lasted for most of a century. That switch from ubiquitous to unavailable was so stark and long-lasting that many drinkers find it impossible to think of absinthe and not focus on the three or four decades of its greatest popularity.
But absinthe is hardly hogtied by its history. When I started researching my new book, “The Absinthe Forger: A True Story of Deception, Betrayal, and the World’s Most Dangerous Spirit,” I saw that the Green Fairy is changing in a number of ways. Although absinthe is celebrated for its past, the drink is developing new styles — from low-alcohol liqueurs to barrel-aged expressions and recipes with non-traditional ingredients — that will surprise fans
